Ex Parte Harrison et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 26, 2016

13217892 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/217,892 08/25/2011 Keith Harrison
56436 7590 09/28/2016
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
82263722 6837
EXAMINER
COYER, RY AND
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2197
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/28/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
mkraft@hpe.com
chris.mania@hpe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte KEITH HARRISON and BRIAN QUENTIN MONAHAN
Appeal2015-006451
Application 13/217,892
Technology Center 2100
Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JEFFREYS. SMITH, and
TERRENCE W. McMILLIN, Administrative Patent Judges.
THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner finally rejecting claims 1-20, all the claims pending in the
application. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
Appeal2015-006451
Application 13/217,892
The present invention relates generally to testing of code, and more
specifically to testing of code that involves code coverage where tools are
applied to determine code paths that have been traversed during testing (see
Spec. ,-r 1 ).
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A non-transitory computer readable medium
comprising computer executable instructions that when executed
cause a processor to:
identify a group of instructions corresponding to a code
block of an executable module;
increment a counter associated with the code block to
indicate the code block has been tested during a training phase;
monitor a value of the counter of the code block during
execution of release code that has been provided to a user of the
executable module to determine whether or not the executable
module had been tested during the training phase; and
stop code execution of the executable module if the
monitored value of the counter during run-time operation of the
release code indicates that the code block had not been tested
during the training phase.
Appellants appeal the following rejections:
RI. Claims 1-13 and 15-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Pavlopoulou (Christina Pavlopoulou, Residual Test
Coverage Monitoring, 277-84 (1999) (ACM)) and Shidla (US
2005/0055674 Al, publ. Mar. 10, 2005).
R2. Claim 14 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Pavlopoulou, Shidla, and Hecht (US 2007/0006159 Al,
publ. Jan. 4, 2007)
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Appeal2015-006451
Application 13/217,892
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed Appellants' arguments in the Briefs, the
Examiner's rejections, and the Examiner's response to Appellants'
arguments. We concur with Appellants' conclusion that the Examiner erred
in finding that Pavlopoulou and Shidla teach the claimed "stop code
execution of the executable module if the monitored value of the counter
during run-time operation of the release code indicates that the code block
had not been tested during the training phase" (see claim 1 ).
Here, the Examiner finds that Pavlopoulou teaches generating a
warning based on the monitored value of a counter (see Ans. 4), and that
Pavlopoulou's binary indication of whether or not a code has been executed
"is an equivalent of the claimed counter" (Ans. 18). We disagree with this
interpretation.
As identified by Appellants, the claimed invention requires that "the
'monitored value of the counter during run-time operation of the release
code indicat[ing] that the code block has not been tested', invokes the
'stop[ping] code execution"' (App. Br. 14) (emphasis added). We find that
the ordinary and usual meaning of "counter" is a device for indicating a
number or amount. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 297 (9th Ed.
1990).
Here, we agree with Appellants that Pavlopoulou teaching "is limited
to a binary indication of whether or not the code has been executed" (App.
Br. 15). We find that such a binary indication is merely illustrating a "yes"
or "no" regarding whether code has been executed, as opposed to how many
times it has been executed, i.e., an amount.
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Appeal2015-006451
Application 13/217,892
Thus, we disagree with the Examiner's finding that Pavlopoulou's
binary indication reads on the claimed "counter," as recited in independent
claim 1 with commensurate limitations in each of the remaining independent
claims. Because we agree with at least one of the arguments advanced by
Appellants, we need not reach the merits of Appellants' other arguments.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the Examiner's obviousness
rejections of claims 1-20.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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